New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals ruled on February 13, 2018 that a Facebook account holder’s designation of a posting as “private” did not preclude a litigant from obtaining copies of those postings where they may be relevant to the litigation.

The ruling comes from a personal injury case where the plaintiff claimed to suffer permanent injury in an equine fall.  The plaintiff’s claims included those typically associated with loss of enjoyment of life. The defendant sought to secure plaintiff’s entire Facebook account. Plaintiff opposed production of any private posting and the intermediate appellate court agreed that privacy protection was available.  Further, appellate review was allowed.

The Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division, noting that its ruling would allow a party to effectively “hide” otherwise discover-able material simply by marking it as private or otherwise curating their own social media postings. It permitted the Defendant to review post accident postings in search of evidence to rebut Plaintiff’s claim to have suffered cognitive injuries and loss of life’s enjoyment caused by the accident.

The ruling was not open ended however. The trial court had ordered all pre and post accident photos to be produced without regard to privacy settings except those involving nudity or romantic encounters. It also ordered Facebook to produce records of the frequency and length of the postings so that pre and post accident activity could be compared.  The Court of Appeals upheld those limitations but added that a request for these kinds of materials needs to be reasonably calculated to yield relevant information.

Needless to say, in the world of divorce, the scope of relevancy will be considerably broader than that associated with a claim for physical injuries. But, the ruling is an important one.

Forman v. Henkin  http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ny-court-of-appeals/1889175.html